531 U.S. 356

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

[February 21, 2001]

Justice Kennedy
, with whom
Justice OConnor
joins, concurring.

Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves. Quite apart from any historical documentation, knowledge of our own human instincts teaches that persons who find it difficult to perform routine functions by reason of some mental or physical impairment might at first seem unsettling to us, unless we are guided by the better angels of our nature. There can be little doubt, then, that persons with mental or physical impairments are confronted with prejudice which can stem from indifference or insecurity as well as from malicious ill will.

One of the undoubted achievements of statutes designed to assist those with impairments is that citizens have an incentive, flowing from a legal duty, to develop a better understanding, a more decent perspective, for accepting persons with impairments or disabilities into the larger society. The law works this way because the law can be a teacher. So I do not doubt that the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 will be a milestone on the path to a more decent, tolerant, progressive society.

It is a question of quite a different order, however, to say that the States in their official capacities, the States as governmental entities, must be held in violation of the Constitution on the assumption that they embody the misconceived or malicious perceptions of some of their citizens. It is a most serious charge to say a State has engaged in a pattern or practice designed to deny its citizens the equal protection of the laws, particularly where the accusation is based not on hostility but instead on the failure to act or the omission to remedy. States can, and do, stand apart from the citizenry. States act as neutral entities, ready to take instruction and to enact laws when their citizens so demand. The failure of a State to revise policies now seen as incorrect under a new understanding of proper policy does not always constitute the purposeful and intentional action required to make out a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. See
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229 (1976)
.

For the reasons explained by the Court, an equal protection violation has not been shown with respect to the several States in this case. If the States had been transgressing the
Fourteenth Amendment by their mistreatment or lack of concern for those with impairments, one would have expected to find in decisions of the courts of the States and also the courts of the United States extensive litigation and discussion of the constitutional violations. This confirming judicial documentation does not exist. That there is a new awareness, a new consciousness, a new commitment to better treatment of those disadvantaged by mental or physical impairments does not establish that an absence of state statutory correctives was a constitutional violation.

It must be noted, moreover, that what is in question is not whether the Congress, acting pursuant to a power granted to it by the Constitution, can compel the States to act. What is involved is only the question whether the States can be subjected to liability in suits brought not by the Federal Government (to which the States have consented, see
Alden
v.
Maine,
527 U. S. 706,
755 (1999)
), but by private persons seeking to collect moneys from the state treasury without the consent of the State. The predicate for money damages against an unconsenting State in suits brought by private persons must be a federal statute enacted upon the documentation of patterns of constitutional violations committed by the State in its official capacity. That predicate, for reasons discussed here and in the decision of the Court, has not been established. With these observations, I join the Courts opinion.

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation

on writ of certiorari to the united states court of
appeals for the eleventh circuit

Reviewing the congressional record as if it were an administrative agency record, the Court holds the statutory provision before us,
42 U. S. C. §12202, unconstitutional. The Court concludes that Congress assembled insufficient evidence of unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 12, that Congress improperly attempted to re-write the law we established in
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc.,
473 U. S. 432 (1985)
,
ante
, at 16, and that the law is not sufficiently tailored to address unconstitutional discrimination,
ante
, at 1415.

Section 5, however, grants Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation the
Fourteenth Amendments equal protection guarantee. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5. As the Court recognizes, state discrimination in employment against persons with disabilities might  run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause  where there is no  rational relationship between the disparity of treatment and some legitimate governmental purpose. 
Ante
, at 8 (quoting
Heller
v.
Doe,
509 U. S. 312,
320 (1993)
). See also
Cleburne
v.
Cleburne Living Center, Inc., supra
, at 440 (stating that the Court will sustain a classification if it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest). In my view, Congress reasonably could have concluded that the remedy before us constitutes an appropriate way to enforce this basic equal protection requirement. And that is all the Constitution requires.

I

The Court says that its primary problem with this statutory provision is one of legislative evidence. It says that Congress assembled only … minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination in employment.
Ante
, at 12. In fact, Congress compiled a vast legislative record documenting  massive, society-wide discrimination  against persons with disabilities. S. Rep. No. 101116, pp. 89 (1989) (quoting testimony of Justin Dart, chairperson of the Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities). In addition to the information presented at 13 congressional hearings (see Appendix A,
infra
), and its own prior experience gathered over 40 years during which it contemplated and enacted considerable similar legislation (see Appendix B,
infra
), Congress created a special task force to assess the need for comprehensive legislation. That task force held hearings in every State, attended by more than 30,000 people, including thousands who had experienced discrimination first hand. See From ADA to Empowerment, Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of Americans with Disabilities, 16 (Oct. 12, 1990) (hereinafter Task Force Report). The task force hearings, Congress own hearings, and an analysis of census data, national polls, and other studies led Congress to conclude that people with disabilities, as a group, occupy an inferior status in our society, and are severely disadvantaged socially, vocationally, economically, and educationally.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(6). As to employment, Congress found that [t]wo-thirds of all disabled Americans between the age of 16 and 64 [were] not working at all, even though a large majority wanted to, and were able to, work productively. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 9. And Congress found that this discrimination flowed in significant part from stereotypic assumptions as well as purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(a)(7).

The powerful evidence of discriminatory treatment throughout society in general, including discrimination by private persons and local governments, implicates state governments as well, for state agencies form part of that same larger society. There is no particular reason to believe that they are immune from the stereotypic assumptions and pattern of purposeful unequal treatment that Congress found prevalent. The Court claims that it make[s] no sense to take into consideration constitutional violations committed by local governments.
Ante
, at 71. But the substantive obligation that the Equal Protection Clause creates applies to state and local governmental entities alike.
E.g.,
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U. S. 469 (1989)
. Local governments often work closely with, and under the supervision of, state officials, and in general, state and local government employers are similarly situated. Nor is determining whether an apparently local entity is entitled to
Eleventh Amendment immunity as simple as the majority suggestsit often requires a  detailed examination of the relevant provisions of [state] law. 
Regents of Univ. of Cal.
v.
Doe,
519 U. S. 425, n. 6 (1997) (quoting
Moor
v.
County of Alameda,
411 U. S. 693,
719721 (1973)
).

In any event, there is no need to rest solely upon evidence of discrimination by local governments or general societal discrimination. There are roughly 300 examples of discrimination by state governments themselves in the legislative record. See,
e.g.,
Appendix C,
infra.
I fail to see how this evidence fall[s] far short of even suggesting the pattern of unconstitutional discrimination on which §5 legislation must be based.
Ante
, at 12.

The congressionally appointed task force collected numerous specific examples, provided by persons with disabilities themselves, of adverse, disparate treatment by state officials. They reveal, not what the Court describes as half a dozen instances of discrimination,
ante,
at 11, but hundreds of instances of adverse treatment at the hands of state officialsinstances in which a person with a disability found it impossible to obtain a state job, to retain state employment, to use the public transportation that was readily available to others in order to get to work, or to obtain a public education, which is often a prerequisite to obtaining employment. State-imposed barriers also frequently made it difficult or impossible for people to vote, to enter a public building, to access important government services, such as calling for emergency assistance, and to find a place to live due to a pattern of irrational zoning decisions similar to the discrimination that we held unconstitutional in
Cleburne,
473 U. S., at 448. See Appendix C, infra.

As the Court notes, those who presented instances of discrimination rarely provided additional, independent evidence sufficient to prove in court that, in each instance, the discrimination they suffered lacked justification from a judicial standpoint. Ante
, at 12 (stating that instances of discrimination are described out of context). Perhaps this explains the Courts view that there is minimal evidence of unconstitutional state discrimination.
Ibid.
But a legislature is not a court of law. And Congress, unlike courts, must, and does, routinely draw general conclusionsfor example, of likely motive or of likely relationship to legitimate needfrom anecdotal and opinion-based evidence of this kind, particularly when the evidence lacks strong refutation. See Task Force Report 16, 20 (task force met many times with significant representatives of groups opposed to [the] ADA, and as to the general public, although the task force received about 2,000 letters in support of the ADA, there was only one letter in opposition); S. Rep. No. 101116, at 10 (summarizing testimony that many reasonable accommodations cost less than $50, and the expense of others, such as hiring employees who can interpret for the deaf, is frequently exaggerated). In reviewing §5 legislation, we have never required the sort of extensive investigation of each piece of evidence that the Court appears to contemplate. Compare
ante
, at 1213, with
Katzenbach
v.
Morgan,
384 U. S. 641,
652656 (1966)
(asking whether Congress likely conclusions were reasonable, not whether there was adequate evidentiary support in the record). Nor has the Court traditionally required Congress to make findings as to state discrimination, or to break down the record evidence, category by category. Compare
ante,
at 13 (noting statements in two congressional Reports that mentioned state discrimination in public services and transportation but not in employment), with
Morgan, supra
, at 654 (considering what Congress might have concluded); 384 U. S., at 652 (holding that likely discrimination against Puerto Ricans in areas other than voting supported statute abolishing literacy test as qualification for voting).

Regardless, Congress expressly found substantial unjustified discrimination against persons with disabilities.
42 U. S. C. §12101(9) (finding a pattern of 
unnecessary
discrimination and prejudice that costs the United States billions of dollars in
unnecessary
expenses resulting from dependency and nonproductivity (emphasis added)). See also 2 Legislative History of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Leg. Hist.) (Committee Print compiled for the House Committee on Education and Labor), Ser. No. 102B, p. 1620 (1990) (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (describing unjustifiable and discriminatory loss of job opportunities);
id.
, at 1623 (citing study showing  strong evidence that employers fears of low performance among disabled workers are unjustified ). Moreover, it found that such discrimination typically reflects stereotypic assumptions or purposeful unequal treatment.
42 U. S. C. §12101(7). See also 2 Leg. Hist. 1622 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson) (Outmoded stereotypes whether manifested in medical or other job requirements that are unrelated to the successful performance of the job, or in decisions based on the generalized perceptions of supervisors and hiring personnel, have excluded many disabled people from jobs for which they are qualified). In making these findings, Congress followed our decision in
Cleburne
, which established that not only discrimination against persons with disabilities that rests upon a bare … desire to harm a politically unpopular group, 473 U. S., at 447 (quoting
Department of Agriculture
v.
Moreno,
413 U. S. 528,
534 (1973)
(omission in
Cleburne
)), violates the
Fourteenth Amendment, but also discrimination that rests solely upon negative attitude[s], fea[r], 473 U. S., at 448, or irrational prejudice,
id.
, at 450. Adverse treatment that rests upon such motives is unjustified discrimination in
Cleburne
s terms.

The evidence in the legislative record bears out Congress finding that the adverse treatment of persons with disabilities was often arbitrary or invidious in this sense, and thus unjustified. For example, one study that was before Congress revealed that most … governmental agencies in [one State] discriminated in hiring against job applicants for an average period of five years after treatment for cancer, based in part on coworkers misguided belief that cancer is contagious. 2 Leg. Hist. 16191620 (testimony of Arlene B. Mayerson). A school inexplicably refused to exempt a deaf teacher, who taught at a school for the deaf, from a listening skills requirement. Governments Lodging 1503. A State refused to hire a blind employee as director of an agency for the blindeven though he was the most qualified applicant.
Id.
, at 974. Certain state agencies apparently had general policies against hiring or promoting persons with disabilities.
Id.
, at 1159, 1577. A zoo turned away children with Downs Syndrome because [the zookeeper] feared they would upset the chimpanzees. S. Rep. No. 101116, at 7. There were reports of numerous zoning decisions based upon negative attitudes or fear,
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 448, such as a zoning board that denied a permit for an obviously pretextual reason after hearing arguments that a facility would house  deviants  who needed  room to roam,  Governments Lodging 1068. A complete listing of the hundreds of examples of discrimination by state and local governments that were submitted to the task force is set forth in Appendix C,
infra
. Congress could have reasonably believed that these examples represented signs of a widespread problem of unconstitutional discrimination.

II

The Courts failure to find sufficient evidentiary support may well rest upon its decision to hold Congress to a strict, judicially created evidentiary standard, particularly in respect to lack of justification.
Justice Kennedy
s empirical conclusionwhich rejects that of Congressrests heavily upon his failure to find extensive litigation and discussion of constitutional violations, in 
the courts
of the United States.
Ante
, at 2 (K
ennedy
, J., concurring) (emphasis added). And the Court itself points out that, when economic or social legislation is challenged in court as irrational, hence unconstitutional, the burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification.
Ante
, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). Or as Justice Brandeis, writing for the Court, put the matter many years ago,  if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain  challenged legislation, then  there is a presumption of the existence of that state of facts, and one who assails the classification must carry the burden of showing . . . that the action is arbitrary. 
Pacific States Box & Basket Co.
v.
White,
296 U. S. 176,
185 (1935)
(quoting
Bordens Farm Products Co.
v.
Baldwin,
293 U. S. 194,
209 (1934)
). Imposing this special burden upon Congress, the Court fails to find in the legislative record sufficient indication that Congress has negative[d] the presumption that state action is rationally related to a legitimate objective.
Ante
, at 9.

The problem with the Courts approach is that neither the burden of proof that favors States nor any other rule of restraint applicable to
judges
applies to
Congress
when it exercises its §5 power. Limitations stemming from the nature of the judicial process … have no application to Congress.
Oregon
v.
Mitchell,
400 U. S. 112,
248 (1970)
(Brennan, White, and
M
arshall, JJ., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Rationalbasis reviewwith its presumptions favoring constitutionalityis a paradigm of
judicial
restraint.
FCC
v.
Beach Communications, Inc.
,
508 U. S. 307,
314 (1993)
(emphasis added). And the Congress of the United States is not a lower court.

Indeed, the Court in
Cleburne
drew this very institutional distinction. We emphasized that courts have been very reluctant, as they should be in our federal system and with our respect for the separation of powers, to closely scrutinize legislative choices. 473 U. S., at 441. Our invocation of judicial deference and respect for Congress was based on the fact that [§]5 of the [Fourteenth] Amendment empowers
Congress
to enforce [the equal protection] mandate.
Id.
,
at 439 (emphasis added). Indeed, we made clear that the absence of a contrary congressional finding was critical to our decision to apply mere rational-basis review to disability discrimination claimsa congressional direction to apply a more stringent standard would have been controlling.
Ibid.
See also
Washington
v.
Davis,
426 U. S. 229,
248 (1976)
(refusing to invalidate a law based on the Equal Protection Clause because a disparate impact standard should await legislative prescription). Cf.
Mitchell,
supra
, at 284 (Stewart, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (Congress may paint with a much broader brush than may this Court, which must confine itself to the judicial function of deciding individual cases and controversies upon individual records). In short, the Courts claim that to uphold the Acts application to the States would allow Congress to rewrite the
Fourteenth Amendment law laid down by this Court in
Cleburne
,
ante
, at 16, is repudiated by
Cleburne
itself.

There is simply no reason to require Congress, seeking to determine facts relevant to the exercise of its §5 authority, to adopt rules or presumptions that reflect a courts institutional limitations. Unlike courts, Congress can readily gather facts from across the Nation, assess the magnitude of a problem, and more easily find an appropriate remedy. Cf.
Cleburne
,
supra
, at 442443 (addressing the problems of the large and diversified group of persons with disabilities is a difficult and often a technical matter, very much a task for legislators guided by qualified professionals and not by the perhaps ill-informed opinions of the judiciary). Unlike courts, Congress directly reflects public attitudes and beliefs, enabling Congress better to understand where, and to what extent, refusals to accommodate a disability amount to behavior that is callous or unreasonable to the point of lacking constitutional justification. Unlike judges, Members of Congress can directly obtain information from constituents who have first-hand experience with discrimination and related issues.

Moreover, unlike judges, Members of Congress are elected. When the Court has applied the majoritys burden of proof rule, it has explained that we,
i.e.,
the courts, do not  sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations. 
Heller,
509 U. S., at 319 (quoting
New Orleans
v.
Dukes
,
427 U. S. 297,
303 (1976)
(per curiam)
). To apply a rule designed to restrict courts as if it restricted Congress legislative power is to stand the underlying principlea principle of judicial restrainton its head. But without the use of this burden of proof rule or some other unusually stringent standard of review, it is difficult to see how the Court can find the legislative record here inadequate. Read with a reasonably favorable eye, the record indicates that state governments subjected those with disabilities to seriously adverse, disparate treatment. And Congress could have found, in a significant number of instances, that this treatment violated the substantive principles of justificationshorn of their judicial-restraint-related presumptionsthat this Court recognized in
Cleburne
.

And what is wrong with a remedy that, in response to unreasonable employer behavior, requires an employer to make accommodations that are reasonable? Of course, what is reasonable in the statutory sense and what is unreasonable in the constitutional sense might differ. In other words, the requirement may exceed what is necessary to avoid a constitutional violation. But it is just that powerthe power to require more than the minimum that §5 grants to Congress, as this Court has repeatedly confirmed. As long ago as 1880, the Court wrote that §5 brought within the domain of congressional power whatever tends to enforce submission to its prohibitions and to secure to all persons … the equal protection of the laws.
Ex parte Virginia,
100 U. S. 339,
346 (1880)
. More recently, the Court added that §5s draftsmen sought to grant to Congress, by a specific provision applicable to the
Fourteenth Amendment, the same broad powers expressed in the Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I, §8, cl. 18.
Morgan
, 384 U. S., at 650 (citing
McCulloch
v.
Maryland,
4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819)).

In keeping with these principles, the Court has said that [i]t is not for us to review the congressional resolution of the various conflicting considerationsthe risk or pervasiveness of the discrimination in governmental services … , the adequacy or availability of alternative remedies, and the nature and significance of the state interests that would be affected. 384 U. S., at 653. It is enough that we be able to perceive a basis upon which the Congress might resolve the conflict as it did.
Ibid.
See also
South Carolina
v.
Katzenbach,
383 U. S. 301,
324 (1966)
(interpreting the similarly worded enforcement Clause of the
Fifteenth Amendment to permit Congress to use any rational means to effectuate the constitutional prohibition). Nothing in the words reasonable accommodation suggests that the requirement has no tend[ency] to enforce the Equal Protection Clause,
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 346, that it is an irrational way to achieve the objective,
Katzenbach
, 383 U. S., at 324, that it would fall outside the scope of the Necessary and Proper Clause,
Morgan, supra
, at 650, or that it somehow otherwise exceeds the bounds of the appropriate, U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §5.

The Courts more recent cases have professed to follow the longstanding principle of deference to Congress. See
Kimel
v.
Florida Bd. of Regents
,
528 U. S. 62,
81 (2000)
(Congress §5 power is not confined to the enactment of legislation that merely parrots the precise wording of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Rather, Congress can prohibit a somewhat broader swath of conduct, including that which is not itself forbidden by the Amendments text);
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
v.
College Savings Bank,
527 U. S. 627,
639 (1999)
( Congress must have wide latitude ) (quoting
City of Boerne, supra,
at 519520);
City of Boerne
, 521 U. S., at 528 (reaffirming
Morgan
); 521 U. S., at 536 (Congress conclusions are entitled to much deference). And even today, the Court purports to apply, not to depart from, these standards.
Ante
, at 7. But the Courts analysis and ultimate conclusion deprive its declarations of practical significance. The Court sounds the word of promise to the ear but breaks it to the hope.

IV

The Courts harsh review of Congress use of its §5 power is reminiscent of the similar (nowdiscredited) limitation that it once imposed upon Congress Commerce Clause power. Compare
Carter
v.
Carter Coal Co.,
298 U. S. 238 (1936)
, with
United States
v.
Darby,
312 U. S. 100,
123 (1941)
(rejecting
Carter Coals
rationale). I could understand the legal basis for such review were we judging a statute that discriminated against those of a particular race or gender, see
United States
v.
Virginia
,
518 U. S. 515 (1996)
, or a statute that threatened a basic constitutionally protected liberty such as free speech, see
Reno
v.
American Civil Liberties Union,
521 U. S. 844 (1997)
; see also Post & Siegel, Equal Protection by Law: Federal Antidiscrimination Legislation After
Morrison
and
Kimel
, 110 Yale L. J. 441, 477 (2000) (stating that the Courts recent review of §5 legislation appears to approach strict scrutiny); 1 L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law §516, p. 959 (3d ed. 2000) (same). The legislation before us, however, does not discriminate against anyone, nor does it pose any threat to basic liberty. And it is difficult to understand why the Court, which applies minimum rational-basis review to statutes that
burden
persons with disabilities,
ante
, at 78, subjects to far stricter scrutiny a statute that seeks to
help
those same individuals.

I recognize nonetheless that this statute imposes a burden upon States in that it removes their
Eleventh Amendment protection from suit, thereby subjecting them to potential monetary liability. Rules for interpreting §5 that would provide States with special protection, however, run counter to the very object of the
Fourteenth Amendment. By its terms, that Amendment prohibits
States
from denying their citizens equal protection of the laws. U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1. Hence principles of federalism that might otherwise be an obstacle to congressional authority are necessarily overridden by the power to enforce the Civil War Amendments by appropriate legislation. Those Amendments were specifically designed as an expansion of federal power and an intrusion on state sovereignty.
City of Rome,
446 U. S., at 179. See also
Fitzpatrick
v.
Bitzer,
427 U. S. 445,
456 (1976)
;
Ex parte Virginia
,
supra
, at 345.
And, ironically, the greater the obstacle the
Eleventh Amendment poses to the creation by Congress of the kind of remedy at issue herethe decentralized remedy of private damage actionsthe more Congress, seeking to cure important national problems, such as the problem of disability discrimination before us, will have to rely on more uniform remedies, such as federal standards and court injunctions,
42 U. S. C. §12188(a)(2), which are sometimes draconian and typically more intrusive. See
College Savings Bank
v.
Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Ed. Expense Bd.
,
527 U. S. 666,
704705 (1999)
(
Breyer
, J., dissenting). Cf.
ante
, at 15, n. 8. For these reasons, I doubt that todays decision serves any constitutionally based federalism interest.

The Court, through its evidentiary demands, its non-deferential review, and its failure to distinguish between judicial and legislative constitutional competencies, improperly invades a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.
Morgan,
384 U. S., at 648, n. 7 (The sponsors and supporters of the [Fourteenth] Amendment were primarily interested in augmenting the power of Congress). Its decision saps §5 of independent force, effectively confin[ing] the legislative power … to the insignificant role of abrogating only those state laws that the judicial branch [is] prepared to adjudge unconstitutional.
Id
., at 648649. Whether the Commerce Clause does or does not enable Congress to enact this provision, see,
e.g.,
Seminole Tribe of Fla.
v.
Florida,
517 U. S. 44,
100185 (1996)
(
Souter,
J
.,
joined
by
Ginsburg
and
Breyer, JJ.,
dissenting);
College Savings Bank, supra
, at 699700 (
Breyer
, J., dissenting), in my view, §5 gives Congress the necessary authority.

For the reasons stated, I respectfully dissent.

APPENDIX A TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Congressional hearings on the Americans with Disabilities Act

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing on H. R. 2273 and S. 933 before the Subcommittee on Transportation and Hazardous Materials of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearings on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Surface Transportation of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities: Telecommunications Relay Services, Hearing on Title V of H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1990).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearing on H. R. 2273 before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Field Hearing on Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989).

Hearing on H. R. 2273, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (July 18 & Sept. 13, 1989) (two hearings)

Oversight Hearing on H. R. 4498, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989)

Americans with Disabilities Act: Hearing before the House Committee on Small Business, 101st Cong., 2d Sess. (1990); Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989: Hearings on S. 933 before the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, 101st Cong., 1st Sess. (1989) (May 1989 Hearings).

Americans with Disabilities Act of 1988: Joint Hearing on S. 2345 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Select Education of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. (1989).

APPENDIX B TO OPINION OF BREYER, J.

Disability discrimination laws enacted by Congress prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act

00255
public functions failed to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00258
deaf people denied access to state agencies that lacked TDDs

00261
California Basic Educational Skills Test discriminated against deaf adults who wanted to become teachers of deaf students

00262
department of motor vehicles required doctors to report patients with seizure disorders and revoked such patients licenses, but did not require reporting of other conditions that could cause erratic driving

COLORADO

Page No.

00266
person in wheelchair passed by five bus drivers, all of whom claimed that lifts were broken

00267
lack of curb cuts and ramps; inaccessible public transportation

00268
inaccessible public transportation

00269
inaccessible public transportation

00270
persons with disabilities placed in segregated public housing

00271
inaccessible public transportation

00272
lack of curb cuts forced person in wheelchair to use street

00273
inaccessible county courthouse

00274
inaccessible public transportation

00275
inaccessible public transportation in small cities; public schools failed to assist students with disabilities

00276
inaccessible public transportation; inaccessible public facilities and recreation sites

00277
political parties held caucuses at inaccessible private home

00280
children with developmental disabilities required to attend segregated schools

00281
public school system refused to transfer student with disabilities from special to regular school until she brought suit

00451
state employee in wheelchair forced to resign job because frequently unable to get to office due to broken elevator in state building; State Commission on the Handicapped refused employees request for reasonable accommodation

00452
state university failed to provide blind student with timely or adequate books on tape for coursework; lack of signs or information for blind people using public transit

00455
person with disability denied opportunity to testify because department of labor held hearing in an inaccessible room

00456
state employment agency refused to provide interpretive services for deaf people

00457
public school put three-year-old deaf child in same class as fourth graders

00644
person with disability dismissed as director of deaf unit at Central State Hospital

00651
public meetings held at inaccessible locations

00653
inaccessible polling place

00655
state counselors failed to provide rehabilitation assistance to person with head injury

IOWA

Page No.

00659
person dismissed as city bus operator after seeking treatment for mental illness

00664
state commission failed to supply necessary equipment for deaf and blind employee

00665
high school limited opportunities for mentally retarded student to be integrated

KANSAS

Page No.

00670
Kansas Commission of Civil Rights denied legally blind person job as investigator because of limited ability to drive and refused to allow accommodation that would have permitted use of public transportation